Helping Hands For Coaches

This Friday, and the following 2 Fridays, we’ll be discussing Twitter! Be sure to be on the call 10-11am PST to get your first introduction to Twitter.

Last week’s call was a discussion on LinkedIn - creating Buzz through article marketing, creating and promoting events, creating business pages and the new applications available on LinkedIn. Although there are currently 9 applications, during the call I went over the top 5 that would be applicable to life, business, executive coaches and professional speakers.

We briefly reviewed Chuck Hester’s call last week, as well as answered a lot of your questions about LinkedIn and Internet marketing, such as getting your profile to 100% complete and search engine optimization of your LinkedIn profile. Take a listen below, and be sure to have your LinkedIn profile open for the interactive teleclass. This Friday, March 6th, we’ll be going over some of the new programs on LinkedIn, as well as adding your own Events, and creating buzz with articles on LinkedIn. Hope you can join us! Next week we’ll be discussing Twitter!

Chuck Hester, LinkedIn expert, was on the call this Friday – and what an amazing amount of information! Not only did we learn how to easily gain more connections, but how to be authentic on the web. By simply asking the question, “How may I be of service to you?” we open the conversation and relationship with our potential clients and power partners. We’ll be reviewing some of what Chuck had talked about this Friday, from 10-11am PST. To learn more, please visit our Live Webinars page.
Total time of audio: 58 minutes.

If you liked the class, please leave a comment, and let other coaches know! Thanks!

So, what do you do when you’re without your computer – but you just have to share this photo with your ‘followers’? Most of us have a camera with our phone – and if you can send that photo to an email address, then you can share instantly! TwitPic allows you to share with your twitter followers your instant photos. Also, once you upload your photo to TwitPic, you’re a part of their ‘Public Timeline’ – exposing your profile to an infinite number of viewers at that moment. So have fun in the moment – and share your experience! 

Don’t think your target market is on Twitter? Think again!

I just received a great email regarding a coach that works with women in career transition – is Twitter a marketing tool for her? Where are her prospects and clients? Well, let’s take a look at a quick Twitter search and see if some might be hiding there: Looking for a Job & Career Transition. While I wrote that sentence, 5 more people tweeted they’re looking for a job. Wow – that’s a lot of potential clients for a career transition coach!

As the job market becomes full with more and more people looking for work, job seekers may see Twitter as a way to network and connect with possible employers – one that is not being fully utilized yet. Sure, LinkedIn, eCademy, and even Facebook are being utilized by people looking for a new career – but Twitter can also be used in this way. Why? Because it’s a way to have a real conversation, just like you would in a networking meeting.

Why else should you use Twitter: Search Engines. It’s completely indexed by Google – so any keywords you put into your twitter posts could have a pretty high ranking in Google and other search engines. This is great for those ‘long tail keywords’ that might be hard to fit in your website.

You don’t have to spend all your time on Twitter, you can spend just a few minutes each day checking-in with new followers, joining a conversation, making useful connections – and then log-off – so it doesn’t eat away at your time.

Time is precious – and can easily be taken away by New Media Marketing, such as Facebook and Twitter. But, if you go on with a purpose and goal, a time limit, search keywords, and a sense of wanting to connect with others authentically, it can be very rewarding.

By the way – in the 15 minutes it took to write and edit this post, 21 more people tweeted that they are looking for a job. Even if you’re not a career transition coach, go and give some encouragement to these people – they need it.

Want some twitter buttons on your site to get more followers? TwitterButtons has about 35 different buttons available for you to use! Just copy the HTML code, make sure to delete the “YourLink” and add your own before you put it on your site.

Here’s my favorite:

And some more examples:

Do you play phone-tag with your current coaching clients? Wish there was a way to just have them log-in and book an appointment online – but worried about the cost?

I’m really enjoying my Genbook system – it’s free to start (and as little as $20 per month if you want all the features), and prospects and clients find it’s easier to get a hold of me. Like you, my time is my business, so when I’m with a client or a prospect, I can’t help another one at that time. Now, clients and prospects save time by simply booking an appointment with me online – anytime, day or night.

I’m also utilizing Skype to talk with my clients – this also is a great way to ‘compact’ my time. I can have several ‘IM’ (or Instant Messaging) conversations going on at the same time, and still help everyone. Plus, when I talk to clients that are also Skype users, we can have video conference (great for those coaches that like to see their clients while they coach). Oh, and the cost – free. Gosh, I love that word

Most of you have probably at least heard of Twitter by now, if not – get ready! It’s an amazing Social Media tool that can really help you get connected to other entrepreneurs, experts in your field, and of course, prospects and clients! But, I must warn you – it is addicting! You’ll find yourself tweeting live events, while walking to meet with a client, and during your own teleseminars! But, this is what makes Twitter so unique – it helps you to be and stay on people’s mind, even if you’ve never met them. Take, for instance, I’ve been following Warren Whitlock co-author of the Twitter Revolution (with @coachdeb), for a while – but I didn’t think he would recognize me – but here we were, last Friday at the Social Media Conference in San Diego, and he said, “Hey, don’t I know you? I’m following you, aren’t I?” Wow! I was floored – and what floored me more was how many times it happened after that! Now, wouldn’t you like to be known before you enter a networking group? Would you like a room full of potential prospects to feel warm towards you before you spoke? Twitter can do that for you.

So, I know I’ve been holding back from my coaches about this awesome tool – but, I don’t like to promote something until I have a grasp of it myself. So, read further for my resources, and how to get started (you won’t believe how easy it is!)

To get started on Twitter, I recommend going to Twitter, sign-up for an account, add your profile photo (go to ‘Settings’ in the upper right to customize your profile), and then type your first post – just a 140 characters. I  then recommend you to start following people that automatically follow others, as John Chow suggests. He recommends that you get beyond the 100 ‘followers’ count  to be ‘socially proof’.  How do you know if they’ll automatically follow you? Just see if their ‘followers’ count matches their ‘follow’ count.

Once you hit the 100 followers mark, then you need to make your tweets interesting. Whenever I mention Twitter, the main question I get is “Why does anyone want to know what I had for breakfast?” Good point – they probably don’t! I think some ‘Not Dead Yet’ moments are fine (for instance, “Drinking some coffee with the hubby at my favorite coffee shop: http://theneighborhoodcup.com/“), but generally that’s not going to get you a huge following. So, before you post, notice if what you’re about to tweet is interesting to your potential following (yes, you should have a goal of who you want to have follow you – mainly your target market).

One issue that I came across when I first started tweeting was understanding other tweets! It’s like it’s in a different language – one that’s constricted by 140 characters! Thanks to my friend, Mari Smith, I was able to understand the @ symbol in front of people’s names, and the short hand that tweaps use.

Some musts to help you save time while using this great Social Media tool:
TweetScan – a ‘search’ tool for Twitter – find your target market easily
Tweet Deck – a desktop software that allows you to know what’s going on in the Twitter world, without having to go online
TwitScoop – find out what’s the hot topic right now and join the conversation
TweetLater – want to be sure a tweet goes out at a certain time but not sure if you’ll remember to tweet it? Use this tool to schedule tweets to post in your account.
BudURL – want to see if all this Social Marketing is working? This tool will take your URL, and track the results – who’s clicking from where.
SocialToo – allows you to auto-follow followers, and can let you know when people stop following you.

Some Free Resources on Twitter that I used to get started:
GeekPreneur Twitter Handbook
Guy Kawaski : How to Use Twitter as a Twool, and Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter
Warren Whitlock and Coach Deb: Free Twitter Handbook
Duct Tape Marketing: Free downloadable eBook on Using Twitter for Business
Twitter Lingo: by Mari Smith
Have another resource you found helpful? Add a comment and the link! Thanks!

As Warren said last Friday, the main thing is – Twitter has no rules – you can decide on how you want to brand yourself on Twitter. So, have fun and Happy Tweeting! Oh, and if you liked this post, please follow me at http://www.twitter.com/rachelpradhan  See you there!

My husband, Nirzhar, is usually the photographer of the family, but when I recently opened a Flickr account to start promoting websites that we’ve recently launched – I came in contact with the little girl that used to hog the disposable camera during family vacations. I find myself spending hours going through the amazing images of professional and amature photographers alike – my own personal museum of life’s own beauty. Flickr is inspiring to my childhood dreams of being a photographer – and again I see the live action ‘snap shots’ of life that my memories are filled with.

I know Flickr isn’t new – I believe Nirzhar started his account when it started in 2004 – but it’s new to my heart – and thus I wanted to share my new love with all of you. To your inspiration!

PS- there is a flickr community, so it’s another great way to connect and network with people   Also, there is a Creative Commons area under “Explore” in which you can search for images that you can use in your eNewsletters and Blog articles, often for free, but check the licence before you use.

Wouldn’t you love a community full of people all over the world supporting your business, helping it grow, referring to it, all while building relationships with current and past clients?  In the past, this would have taken a lot of effort – putting on events, networking, in-person meetings. But, as a coach, you can have potential clients from all over the world – so building your community in your geographic area may not work for your business. To quoting Seth Godin: “Realize that one day soon, you’ll be spending much of your time working with people who you will probably never meet in person.” The good news about the Internet: you can easily build that community through  online social networks – especially with Ning.com.

Ning.com is a great service for coaches because it allows you to build your community, support your current clients, and potentially attract future ones – all with very little cost. You can customize it’s look and feel, control who can join, and control the content of the site. Members can have their own blog, upload video and audio, upload images, and participate in the online forums. This allows you to see what your clients, and prospects, are struggling with, interested in, and connect to them to build the strong relationship and brand that will help your coaching clients coming back for more. You can read a ‘how-to’ for coaches on Ning.com at the ICF-OC website.